Triggerworn
by Frank 2.0
Summary: A series of unrelated Kenlee one-shots spanning through all episodes.
1. On the Roadside

Just beneath the cage of Lee's thick ribs, pounding, moving to the thrumming rhythm of his heart, the dark-toned man could feel tendrils of hatred weave their way into the words that bubbled like malleable clay atop his writhing, bitten tongue. His teeth were clenched ever so tightly. and they filtered malice into the sharp vowels his tongue cast forward. "Kenny, go fuck yourself." Lee spoke the words and hardly expected them to make his mind surge into battle against the man he _was._ The instant Kenny's eyes shivered, undulating lakes of mud tossing in a storm, Lee was fighting the urge to whip his arm forward and take Kenny's hand - to apologize like a _bitch. _Like a _kid. _

Kenny's hands grew too firm for comfort, paling softly as he eyed the grimacing Lee. "Kenny, I -" Lee was shouting, now, panicking, his words tossed fiercely into a whirlwind of 'if' as he broke his pact against the better choice - as his hand lunged, and Kenny's heated shoulder was firmly held within his grip, spinning Ken's dark gaze back toward that of the other man.

"What the fuck do'ya _want _from me, Lee?" Blurted the redneck. His words were rushed like one elaborate slur of harsh language, each and every peak of a syllable swaying beneath the shuttle of his exasperation. Kenny's brows had drooped heavily, fallen with all the rest of the hopelessness that boiled in his core. Kenny was completely _done. _It was over. Duck was gone. Katjaa...

Lee seemed to be testing his own strength with the hand he had plastered over Kenny's hot flesh. Every finger tightened like a vice in that one wriggling moment, an instant's realization flooding over him and catching in a net of brisk anger and pain. "_Kenny!_" Lee screamed the single word into the other man's face, so close, the heat and bitter wind of the English teacher's breath could nestle a sour furrow into the crease of Kenny's eyebrows. "Kenny, I** _need_** you."

The older man shrugged beneath Lee's burning heat, the boiling flesh of Lee Everett's palm searing a white mark into the skin beneath Kenny's dark fishing t-shirt. "Bullshit, Lee," Kenny spat at him. The words slid easily past the gate of Kenny's darkening teeth. It was a matter of fact - as true as a tidbit found in the center of an old history textbook. Kenny's eyes lolled from one edge to the other from inside his head, the dirty brown gaze scraping entirely over the despondent landscape. Kenny had grey facial hair that glistened ever so lightly beneath the rays of the moon when he tersely shook his head. "_Bull_shit."

Lee had lost all sight of the future in the instant the other man began to turn his back. His brown eyes catching on the undulation of Kenny's shoulder-blades beneath the torn-up Fishing Co. top, Lee could inspect the exact moment in which a gasp of hot air hooked within his lungs, a powerful catch and seize of his breath. The dark-eyed man had a manner of moving quietly when he sent his whole body stepping forward, heel after heel making not a single murmur of sound against the cracked and tattered-up concrete highway. The moon sent shadows and beams of soft light waving their echos of illumination over Kenneth's eyes and face, so many twinkles of blue catching onto the grey tint of the other man's beard.

The heat and wetness of Kenny's coarse lips was a thing that came to Lee as even more of a surprise. The pleasant nature of it all, all hidden beneath a storm of intensity, anger riding Lee's expression all the way as Lee sent his mouth moving with pure energy against the other man, and a tickle of Ken's cheek brushed lightly against him. Kenny had a hot mouth and an even angrier fashion of kissing somebody. The two men had sent their mouths writhing against each other, and Kenny's bottomless eyes were peering so deep into Lee, even as, with every tendril of heat that crept between them as their flesh and skin touched, Lee's eyes clapped angrily shut.

"I..." The world could barely slither between the frantic motion of the mouths of the two men, Kenny's voice sounding small and as deep as a chasm, gruff and heat-stricken. Lee's thick fingers worked quickly to raise his damaged shirt. Kenny's breath was gripped tightly in his chest with a feeling of lust - it seemed to happen so heavily, and it _kept happening _with _every. Fucking. Time. _Kenny's drawn-out breath cast itself into the sound of a jagged moan, his fingertips grazing the flesh of Lee's lower thigh over a thick canvas of jeans. The heat was coiled around every inch of his insides, filling him to his core with dire commitment. _"_I need you, too, Lee."


	2. Kenny's Letter

**Kenny's Letter**

* * *

><p>Hey, there, Lee . I... I know you're dead and gone as I'm writing this, and with every word I have to etch down, my hands are just... shaking. Some of the guys told me it would be a good idea to scribble down all of my thoughts. Maybe turn the nightmares into something real again. Maybe face them now. You know, so in the future... it - it won't hurt as much. Lee, I'm sure you never knew me as a man to express many of my emotions. Even as I was holding Benny by the throat that one time when he and I fought, I never fathomed that it would all grow this large or become quite so difficult for me to control.<p>

The both of us are aware that I have a tendency to let go of my anger, or fly off of the handle, or whatever it is that people like to call it. Lilly in particular was a girl who created so many ingenious names to refer to my attitude by, and now they're just flooding into my head like a whirlwind of frozen water droplets in a blizzard. I'll bet you remember Lilly. I'm trying so hard to go back to things and people that you'd understand - people that were around during your lifetime, if you get what I'm saying. From Lilly's perspective, my entire personality was the textbook example of how life would be carried by a class-A asshat. She'd never let it go, now would she?

So many things I keep saying about you, whether it's just murmured to myself under my breath, my back turned to the fire and Clementine leaning slightly in, listening to every muttered word without trying to seem overly involved in my private endeavors. Sometimes, I mean - I just find myself holdin' my gun, keepin' watch for the group, and then... the memories just come rushing. Thoughts of you bombard me, Lee. I catch myself talking about you all the time to others who never got the opportunity to live their life with you as a part of it. _I _got that chance with you, Lee. Boy, it was such a privilege.

Whenever I feel down, I have to ask myself how many people were able to have a friend in the mid of the apocalypse. Someone to walk with, someone to talk to. And despite how cute the kid was, God knows Duck was no sort of companion. I mean... boy. _***A pause; a shuddering breath that quakes when it enters. Glistening droplets of saltwater brim the edges of his eyes.***_

Katjaa - when Katjaa died, she... Lee, she took with her a piece of my soul. Beside her, in her grave lays a fragment of the man I was, and now I'm... _***His left hand slaps into the wooden desk in an angry surge at the despondence.***_ Lee, I spend every night that I have here fearing that I'm every bit of the man she wouldn't have wanted. To rewind back to the cool afternoon, standing on the dock, when her bridal gown fluttered in the wind behind her and the fabric caught itself over the surface of the chipped wood... If she would have gazed into our future... if she had known that this was the man whose place that I would take, she surely would've let me go before I kissed her. She sure as _shit _would have run the hell away.

I really ain't any better now than one of those monsters lurking around outside. If she'd been able to stick around, Katjaa would've learned that soon enough. She would've let _go_ of me. Boy, it probably wouldn't even hurt her deep down. Far inside of herself, underneath all of the thoughts that kept her from ever leaving me, she would fully have known that she felt some strain of relief now that I was gone. Hell, I... just _thinking_ about it... a good man would have to encourage her. I would have had to sift through all my pride. Get up off the saddle and let her go.

Can you believe this? Look at me - I'm talking about myself again. _***A stifled laugh, half-hidden by a tuft of graying hair on Kenneth's upper lip. He shields his outburst with an ashy, hurting hand, beaten and hardened with many a past's painful bruise. He drops hold of the pen for a moment, his eyes darting to the blue hue sinking in from the cracks in the boarded-up window. He picks up the pen once again.***_

Clementine is still alive. Figured you'd like to know that little piece of information. You see, there's - there's one thing that you did right. And she's a good girl. Even after you died, every time that I look her way, I get overwhelmed at the gestures she makes with her cut-up hands; the words that come out of her mouth. Everything she does just reminds me of... _Lee. _The day I found her, she almost looked like she was hidin' in the back of a large group of unfamiliar - people who, one way or another, were solely reduced to sullen faces and tiny memories. They all looked like their minds were hollow wooden boxes with holes drilled into 'em where their loved ones used to be. The people looked a little like you and I after Duck was bitten, when we knew exactly what was fixin' to come. Clementine didn't blend in with them. Her hair was a mess of kinks beneath that retarded hat. She looked like she'd been walking on switchblades ever since you left.

Hell, Lee, _I _look like I've been walkin' on switchblades. And _I'm _a handsome guy. I walk alongside Clementine every day now that I've found her since Ben died. Looking at the young lady she's become, I can't help but feel... sadness? Jealousy? When I see her, Lee, I end up thinking too much about the past - I just can't help thinking what kind of a little genius Duck would've turned into. My thoughts always circle back to "what if in a perfect world, Lee and I had had an actual chance?" A _real _chance at - at whatever it is we had goin' between each other. You told me about the murder you committed in the past. I haven't forgotten about it, and I hate to bring it up _now._ But to myself, I always just thought that it was like any other mistake. That... that if I'd come in sooner, then it wouldn't have happened.

Goodness, I'm doing that _thing_ again. Katjaa said it was an emotional mechanism or something, where I pack on the guilt of someone else's problems; treat them like my own. ...It's a moot point _now_, Lee.**_*A shivering breath, brought on by the chill of the room. He lifts himself from the chair momentarily, his pen trembling in his hand as he uses his spare fingers to strike a match, casting the room under an amber light as the hue of the evening slithers in. The scented candle to his right begins to glow.*_**

Lee, I hate to bring it up, but there's something I'd like to talk about. Something that, after all this time, I feel that I oughtta just come out and mention. Lee, can you remember the first time I ever pointed a gun at you? Back at the Motor Inn. Goddamn, do _I_ remember what happened. It surfaces inside of my mind almost every day. I gotta get this off'a my chest.

The look in your eyes was almost like the glow of a moon in the middle of a storm. Around everyone's bodies, rain was fallin' from the dark blue sky, surrounding us like plummeting rockets. The wind and rain was whipping against me - boy, all I could feel was the cold thrumming on my flesh. The windbreaker you had tied to your waist, Lee, served like a tail, and I remember it dancing in the howl of the thunder. Your lips quivered, rain-slicked, as you yelled and screamed so many hateful curses. I remember tryin' to convince myself that every word you said, just for that moment, was spoken in the heat of the situation. I just remember tellin' myself that no matter how hard you tried, your tongue kept on slippin' by accident.

You had the little girl clutching onto your hip - gosh, she was so innocent back then - and I was steaming mad about somethin', and I remember that my fingertips were just _shaking. _It was like I had a fever all of a sudden, as the rain whipped into me; my hat knocked itself from where it was on my head, and it started sailing off into the air to join the thunder up above the three of us. My fingernails were just _clacking_ over the trigger, because I knew I wasn't gonna _shoot_ it. My face was wet and red, all hot with tears but cold beneath the rain, and I... goddamn it, Lee... **_*A pause, and a salty tear slides down his face, catching briefly on small patches of stubble that he hasn't shaved away.*_** I must've looked fucking desperate.

Even in death, Lee. Even in death, it frightens me how you're so capable of making me feel alive and alone all at once. I miss you, Lee. I'm _always_ thinking about you. And the worst thing you could do would be to forget it.


End file.
